


someone else's story

by iaintinapatientphase



Series: what it takes to survive [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dubious Consent, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-28 12:42:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6329674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iaintinapatientphase/pseuds/iaintinapatientphase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn’t a love story, not at all. Maria doesn't like to dwell on it, but that doesn't make it any less true.</p>
<p>Maria, Secretary Hamilton, and that summer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	someone else's story

**Author's Note:**

> hi! this is my version of what happened between maria and alexander. i kept it to a summer, mostly the musical timing. this happens in the same universe as "what we know" and my "a matter of time" series.
> 
> please, please, please mind the tags. maria's in an abusive marriage, and everything that happens between her and alexander is in a very, very grey area. i tried to be respectful and not exploit those dynamics for unnecessary drama, but they are there. there's one explicit sexual scene somewhere in the middle, i put "*" by the beginning and end if you'd like to skip over. any other questions, please feel free to message me on [tumblr](http://iaintinapatientphase.tumblr.com/) if you'd like before reading.
> 
> most importantly: i love maria reynolds.

Maria didn't think that the whole “pretty girl with a car on the side of the road” would work in New York the way it did when they were teenagers in Texas, but what the fuck does she know? James was insistent and she chose not to fight him on it.

It's stupid, sitting here parked outside the Treasury Building, waiting for the man least likely to casually stroll out the front door with time to kill. James’s friend, the one who had planted the idea in his head in the first place, worked as a clerk here and even he said Hamilton practically never left the office. A hundred people would probably come and go before he did, and Maria wasn't sure that she would be able to make sure that he was the one to stop. She had raised these points with James while he was planning, but he wasn't interested and she didn't want to push it. She _chose_ not to push it.

It didn't matter, anyway, it was a stupid plan then and remains a stupid plan now, but Maria's pretty sure she can make it work. She'll do what she has to.

Almost all the pieces are in place: the first Friday in May; warm but not hot. Five o'clock on the dot, so she can be ready when he leaves the office, earlier than he does on weekdays. Maria in a cherry red sundress and flat sandals to force a height difference, right strap slipping off her shoulder: a magnet for wandering eyes. A camera ready in the window across from their front door, waiting to catch them in the act.

Maria hates knowing how to do this, but the fact remains that she does, and she needs money and James to be happy with her in order to get her daughter back. That's far more important than toeing whatever stupid moral lines she has left. Besides, Hamilton has money and reputation to spare. He’ll walk away from this unscathed and unbothered and Maria's life practically depends on it.

So she checks her lipstick one last time — she prefers darker, but Cosmo says men respond better to bright red, so — and gets out of the car a few minutes after five. She's done this about a dozen times, all she has to do is pop the hood and be female and guys will come crawling out of the woodwork to save her. It's pathetically easy.

Except she can't get the hood to open. It's not even their car— they had theirs repossessed two months ago, so James borrowed this one from a friend. She didn't think to practice or anything, which she now regrets. She just did what James told her to do (it was easier that way, it always was, and the fight went out of her a long time ago) and figured she'd work it out somehow. She always does. But she can't get it open and it's starting to hurt her fingers and it's not going to work and James is going to be so mad and she hasn't slept well in a week and all of a sudden she's on the edge of tears and wants to kick something.

“Are you okay?”

She whips around, startled, and _fuck_ , that's him, she recognizes him from TV.

“I'm fine,” she says reflexively, clearing the thickness from her throat. _No one likes a crybaby,_ James snarls in the back of her mind.

Hamilton frowns with his entire body; his eyebrows rise slightly and his whole body seems to tense with a faint air of disapproval. “Are you sure?”

No, she's not sure, and this wasn't supposed to happen this way. She was supposed to be cute and charming and they were supposed to laugh and flirt and he was supposed to look at her like he wanted to sleep with her instead of tuck her into bed like a whiny child.

“Um.” She takes a deep breath, tries to figure out how best to arrange her face, get her balance and her control over the situation back, but he cuts her off.

“Is there something wrong with your car?” Technically it’s a question, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. “I can help. I mean I'm not great with the actual machinery, I fixed a few humvees during the war but your car looks small and old and probably doesn't need duct tape around a bullet hole so I may be a bit out of my depth. I do have triple A though, but that's mostly for my wife, she does more driving and we get discounts on travel. Well, we would, if we travelled more. I take the train these days for the most part, but I do have my car today if all you need is a jump.”

Wow. That's a lot.

“I'm not sure,” she says. He seems like a know it all, she'll let him figure it out. Let him inflate his own ego. “It was making a weird noise but I can't get the hood to open.”

“You have to open the latch. It looks like a hook,” he explains, charging forward, his whole being loosening and somehow expanding with the possibility of fixing something. “It’s a shame that it’s not easier to do these things, especially when you have inexperienced people trying to do it themselves, but I guess that it’s a necessary precaution to take, otherwise we’d all be accidentally opening the hood when we were just trying to lock the door.”

“Right,” she says, mostly to fill in the empty space while he tosses his bag carelessly on the ground and fiddles with the hood of her car. She wouldn’t have pegged him to be so hands on about it, with the suit and the title and all. But he has an endearingly sloppy ponytail and a kind of frantic energy that convinces her that this is probably normal for him.

He can’t seem to get it to budge either, tugs at the hook with a scowl that's getting deeper by the second.

She doesn't love the direction this is going in. It's the opposite of an ego boost, he'll be more angry than anything and she can't work with (let alone emotionally handle) that. “You don't have to—”

“New plan!” he announces, giving no indication that he heard her. “We'll call triple A. I'll take care of whatever repairs need to get done and have them drop it back off to you tomorrow. Does that work?”

“Um, I guess?”

“Do you need to get somewhere?” He tilts his head, like a curious bird. She thinks idly that the nose helps the illusion before she reminds herself not to be needlessly mean. “I can get you a rental. Or you know what? You can honestly borrow mine, I'm not doing anything tomorrow. I'll probably just work from home.”

“No!” Jesus, what is his deal? “No, that's okay.”

He scoffs a little at that, all dismayed and offended that she isn't falling all over herself to accept his chivalry. Strike one against actually liking him. “Oh. Well at least let me call you a tow.”

“That would be nice,” she says.

He loves that, obviously. “Great! Hold on one second, lemme call triple A.” He fumbles in his pocket for his phone and wallet.

“Hi, I need a tow? I'm down by the Treasury building. Uh, account number is 8472009496. Yeah, Alexander Hamilton. Sorry? Yeah, that one,” he says, dumb grin spreading across his face.“Yeah. Okay. Thanks.” He hangs up. “Ten minutes. They said they're having someone rush over,” he informs her, beaming like an idiot. He's not even subtle, not even trying to hide how much he gets off on being important.

She smiles up at him, this _very_ important man that she is _not_ at all annoyed with. “Sounds good. Thank you so much,” she coos, like she doesn't have a phone and couldn't have called a tow all on her own.

He smiles back, very pleased with himself. “What did you say your name was?”

She didn't. “I'm Maria.”

“Maria,” he repeats carefully. She'll concede that she likes the way he says it, weighty in his mouth, like it matters. “I'm—”

“I know,” she quickly cuts him off. She doesn't want to know what he calls himself. She couldn't stomach thinking of him as “Alex” or “Alexander.” Hamilton is fine, that's all she needs to know to get through the rest of this. “I heard,” she explains, pointing at his phone held loosely by his side when he looks at her quizzically.

“Oh! Of course.” He smiles indulgently, like she's impressed him by having ears. Condescending. Another strike. “I'm actually shocked I had the card on me, I usually take the train.”

“It's much faster, especially this time of day,” she agrees blandly.

“Yeah, and I hate driving anyway. Can't multitask now that we're not allowed to text and drive.”

“Well, safety _is_ important.”

“I guess. No, you're right, I was good at it but people shouldn't do that. Whatever. I used to bike sometimes but then I kept getting to work all wrinkled and sweaty and shit so I stopped. And I look stupid in helmets but I have to wear them or my kids will refuse to and you know how that goes.”

She nods. “Absolutely.”

The tow truck arrives and he rushes predictably forward to take over, take care of everything. She lets him. She doesn't particularly like talking to strange men, even less so when she's very consciously dressed as bait. She can handle Hamilton’s eyes lingering along (and skittering away from) the low cut lines of her carefully selected sundress: he's who she's after. She can't take some random guy feeling entitled to check her out while she's simply existing.

Her lines are arbitrary, she knows for sure. But they're all she has.

The driver is absurdly formal, almost embarrassingly deferential. She watches his fingers twitch nervously against his jeans and knows for a fact that he's talking to Secretary Hamilton, Very Important Person. Not really talking, of course, Hamilton won't let him get a single word in. Maria wants to shake the poor kid, scream that Hamilton’s just a man, not a very unique or special one at that. She obviously doesn't.

Hamilton hands over the keys and lets the driver shake his hand one last time, and then they watch the beat up old car that isn’t even hers disappear down the street. She idly wonders how James’s friend will take the news that it’ll be gone for a few days. Hopefully he’ll appreciate that whatever’s wrong with it is getting fixed— for free, she knows instinctively. Hamilton seems like a total show off, loves throwing money and power around.

That’s a little harsh, she supposes. He’s not doing it simply to show off, he thinks he’s helping some girl with car trouble. But still. Maria knows an ego when she sees one.

“Anyway, you live around here? Let’s get you home.”

“I’ll take the train, you don’t need to—”

“Nah, I’ll give you a ride. No trouble at all!” It’s what she wanted, it’s ultimately part of the plan, but she finds herself feeling on edge about it anyway. She doesn’t know him, he doesn’t know her, she doesn’t know what he wants.

“If you’re sure,” she fake concedes, shifting theatrically from foot to foot.

“Absolutely!” he says cheerfully. “You shouldn’t take the train by yourself anyway.”

She doesn’t have time to get into how ridiculous that is — it’s barely seven o’clock, almost all the millions of people in New York take the train by themselves every day— but she reminds herself she’s actively working his white knight thing and just smiles blandly instead as she gets in his car.

Maria gives him her address, starts to direct him but he cuts her off with a wave of the hand. Well, if he wants to ignore the state of the art GPS in his expensive car and wants to pretend he knows how to get the Bronx, it’s his overlarge male ego and his funeral.

“So,” he begins, and she feels the need to brace herself for the onslaught of words he’s winding himself up to dispense. “What brought you all the way downtown?”

“City Hall. Parking sticker,” she lies.

“Have you lived in New York long?”

Jesus, with the questions. Why can’t he talk about himself more so she can pretend to listen and get this over with? “A few years now. How about you?”

“Oh yeah, practically forever. I went to Columbia, back when it was still Kings. And then I was stationed here and nearby during most of the war. My wife’s from here too…” he rambles, on and on and on and easy enough to tune out.

Maria was an English major, before everything. Not at Columbia, obviously, she couldn't have afforded that in a million years. Just at Texas State. She was always been a big reader— her dad got shot in the early days of the war so her mom worked a lot and the library right next door to her office was cheaper than a babysitter. Fairytales, fantasy, anything for an escape. She was going to be a high school teacher and expose other teenagers to all the worlds lined up next to each other on her bookshelf.

Before, at least. These days she still spends a lot of time reading, takes quick trips to the library when she knows James won’t miss her. It’s better than living in her own narrative: a side character forgotten back in act one, a plotline no one ever bothered to check back in on. She’s fading into irrelevance here, caught between the pages of someone else’s story.

He clears his throat. “Will you see if I’m good to change lanes? I slept funny last night and I can’t look over my shoulder the way I need to.”

“Sure?” He’s so weird, he doesn’t know her at all and he’s asking for weird favors and trusting her with his life, apparently? Who does shit like that? She twists up and looks behind them. “You’re good.”

Maria settles back in her seat, but her gaze catches on the car seats, toys, and children’s books littered across the backseat. There’s a front facing one, recommended for ages one to three, the same style that Susie used when they still had a car, when they still had her. His is nicer, obviously, he has actual money. There’s a booster buckled in next to it, ages four to seven. Susie will need that one next year. She’ll be old enough to strap herself in.

She can see him watching her out of the corner of his eye. “Do you have kids?”

“Hmm?” She looks back up at him, shakes herself out of her thoughts.

“You have kids?” Perceptive. She wishes he would leave her alone.

She looks out the window, considers lying. She's bad at it, always has been, and all the best stories come from a hint of truth. “Yeah,” she says softly. “A girl. She's three.”

“She's not with you,” he says flatly.

“No. James took her.” He starts to ask— it's obvious that he can't help himself. “My husband. She’s with his family.”

“Why?”

“Because he took her there and I haven’t been able to get her back yet,” she says, a little frustrated. If she knew why, don’t you think she would have been able to stop it?

“That doesn’t seem right,” he says, a mild, detached, condescending tone that grates along nerves she forgot she had.

“Yeah, well, James does whatever he wants. If I could have stopped him I would have done it a long time ago. Before it got this far.”

She immediately knows she's said too much, closes her eyes as if wishing hard enough could turn back the clock and take the words back. “I didn't mean it like that, it's just… it’s complicated.”

“Is it.” Not a question. Hamilton’s hands tighten on the steering wheel and his jaw clenches. Maria instinctively shrinks back, arms wrapping around her ribs and looking down at her knees. “Does that mean what I think it means? Is he—”

“Yeah,” she cuts him off. She can’t hear the words out loud. She just can’t. She has to go back there, has to sleep next to him, and she can’t do any of that if she has to acknowledge what’s happening. It’s better when she can forget about it.

He hisses a long string of curses under his breath, his hands flexing and releasing, the gold band of his wedding ring catching on the setting sun. “For how long?”

“Long enough. I don’t want to talk about it.”

He doesn’t like that very much. “Have you gone to the police?”

“Wouldn’t work. I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’ll take you to the police station now.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You have to. You need a report and documentation if anything’s going to happen,” he says, ignoring her, slamming the turn signal on.

“Stop,” she says loudly, and he finally looks at her like she’s actually there. “It won’t work.”

“Yes, it will, you just need a restraining order and some legal documentation.”

“No, it won’t,” she snaps. “He has things on me and can turn me right back into the cops. I don’t have any kind of proof that he’s been… mistreating me. And his mother has Susie. I can’t.”

“Fine,” he says petulantly. Jesus, what a child. “We don’t have to right now—” oh, “we,” is it? “ —but you still should go.”

“I’m fine,” she tells him, tells herself. “I’m dealing with it. I just need to get my daughter back first.”

“When will that be? You can’t wait, you can’t stay, you don’t know what could happen.”

_Thanks for that, asshole._ Like Maria doesn’t sit up at night, locked in the bathroom, curled up in the tub where he can’t find her, having those exact thoughts. Like they don’t creep up on her throughout the day, strangling her from the inside. She knows she has to go. She just can’t.

She sighs, tips her head against the cool glass of the window. She’s been pretty honest so far, what’s the harm in a little more. “I can't afford to go get her.”

“I'll lend you the money,” he says immediately.

“No, you won’t,” she says, an accusation and a refusal at the same time.

He's obviously undeterred. “How much do you need?”

“You can't do that,” she says, shaking it off. “It's fine. I'm fine.”

“No, it's not. It's not right. How much do you need? It doesn't matter, I'll give you it either way.”

“Stop.”

“I mean it,” he insists, working himself up. “I really do.”

“Can you just— _stop?_ For a minute?” she asks too quickly, too rudely, throwing a wrench in her ultimate plans of getting him to fuck her.

He just nods, though. He's not all that awful.

Maria bites the inside of her cheek and tries to get her thoughts in order. Maybe that could work. Maybe.

She got pregnant her second year of college. Oldest story in the world: James was her high school sweetheart and she saw him over winter break, wasn’t smart enough to make him use a condom. By the time she realized she was pregnant, she couldn't afford the abortion and the week long stay in a hotel and it's not like she had the money to leave Texas for it. Then she had planned to give it up for adoption, but James didn't want to, and Maria was worried that she would be left in foster care for years and she didn't want that. So they ended up keeping her, her beautiful Susie.

Maria always intended to go back to school, at least part time at the community college in their hometown, but a few months after Susie was born James decided that they should move to New York so he could get a job with some water company someone was starting, and it got lost in the shuffle. She needed to stay home with the baby, and then Susie was almost two and they probably should have put her in daycare so Maria could work too but James was paranoid and didn’t trust anyone else to watch her. Not that Maria disagreed, necessarily, especially with the level of quality that they could afford, but still. So she stayed home, reading out loud to her all day and helping James with his stupid eBay scams.

James took Susie back to Texas six months ago. Maria woke up one morning and they were both gone, not even a note left on the counter. She was out of her mind, this close to calling the police when he finally texted: “have baby. home tomorrow,” but the crib was gone and all Susie’s things were gone and Maria knew what was going to happen before James even got back. She had already cried herself out when he walked in the door, didn’t look up while he told her that Susie was too expensive to take care of right now and would be staying with his family, just said “fine, fine, fine,” over and over and over again.

She should have fought harder for her then, but she can now. She can take Hamilton’s money, get on the first flight to Texas. Get Susie back from his mother, make up some excuse. Lie and say that James got a new job and they were moving into a better apartment. She could go stay with her sister in Chicago.

She could do it. She really could.

A flight and a bus ticket would probably come somewhere around— “Five hundred dollars,” she says before she can think better of it.

“Okay. I think there's a branch of my bank—” he pauses, laughs a little to himself, though she's not sure what's so funny “— around here somewhere.”

She leans back heavily against the seat, closes her eyes and tries to breathe through the onslaught of adrenaline. She's gonna do it. She's leaving. She's getting her daughter back and she's never gonna see James ever again.

“Thank you,” she says, turning in her seat.

He glances over, keeping his hands carefully at ten and two. “It's no problem.”

“I mean it, really. Thank you.”

“It's the right thing to do,” he says firmly, nodding to himself. “It's what any decent person would do.”

It's not, not at all, it's an absurdly generous and oddly presumptuous thing to do. She doesn't say that, though, she doesn't want to scare him into taking it back.

He pulls over, goes through the drive thru of some random Bank of New York. The paint is still fresh. It's still jarring to her, the brilliant green of the logo so different from the Crown Bank red she remembers from her childhood. She likes it, though. Hamilton’s tie is the same color. Like the leaves in the summer.

If she was still sticking to the original plan, she'd try to get his PIN— he doesn't even think to cover his hand, pulls up his balance and mutters something about transferring money to his savings. She can't believe how naive he is, like the thought that he shouldn't make the details of his bank account privy to any stranger sitting next to him had never occurred to him. It's almost embarrassing. She looks away.

“Hey.”

She looks back over at Hamilton, arm outstretched with a wad of bills in it that she knows instinctively is more than five hundred.

She knows she should probably demur, refuse, tell him it’s too much, all those little rituals that people go through to be polite. But she wants it too badly, and they’ve already had that fight. She takes it carefully and holds it tightly in her lap, running a red painted fingernail delicately along the fold in the middle. “Thank you,” she says quietly, unable to look at him, overcome by how much she means it.

“You’re welcome,” he answers, simply, kindly, and keeps driving, lets her have her moment to herself.

He gets a phone call while they're stuck at a red light, scowls at the screen before answering. “What do _you_ want?”

“Hi, Hamilton, I'm well, thank you for asking!” someone drawls from the speakers.

“What do you want?” he demands again, stabbing at buttons on the dashboard but only succeeding in turning the volume up.

“I have a proposition for you.”

“Not interested!” Hamilton yells over his shoulder, digging in the backseat for something.

“You were the one that came to me, asshole,” the voice on the phone says peevishly. “‘Oh, Thomas, help me, I have nowhere else to turn!’” the voice mocks in a devastatingly accurate impression.

“I don't sound like that,” Hamilton whines under his breath, shoving an earpiece in.

“Oh, my man, don't lie to yourself,” the voice says, laughs before getting cut off when Hamilton finally finds the right button.

“Anyway. What's your proposition?”

Maria’s significantly less interested in this conversation (not that she really gave a shit before, but still) now that she can only hear one side of it, looks out the window and tries to guess the ages of all the kids they drive past.

They drive up, up, up, up, through Manhattan and over the bridge to the Bronx, Maria providing quiet directions even though he seemed to know exactly where 170th and Ogden was. How, she doesn’t know. Maybe he’s a Yankees guy. He used to be a lawyer, his LinkedIn says, maybe he had a client or two over here. Pro bono, obviously, charity cases like Maria to make himself feel better. It’s not like anyone with this nice a car and shoes that works with President Washington has any idea what it’s like to live anywhere like this.

_Immigrant_ , James had said. _Practically fresh off the boat._ James doesn't really know what he's talking about, but Maria could see it, maybe. The golden brown skin, the ponytail. But he doesn’t have an accent or anything, and it’s hard to believe that he would be the Treasury Secretary if he was really from some island in the middle of nowhere.

He almost misses the turn onto her street, swears under his breath.

Whatever. It doesn’t really matter, not anymore. She’s leaving and she’s never gonna see him or James or this shitty townhouse ever again. She's almost worried to get out of the car, set her plans in motion. She feels like she might fly away with the joy of it.

“Well. Thank you,” she says awkwardly. She doesn't know how to demonstrate how much she means it. “It's a really… kind thing to do. Honorable,” she adds, for some reason, but the word feels right in her mouth.

“You're welcome.” He smiles at her, the setting sun smoothing out the lines of his face and soothing the enormous bags under his eyes. He looks good like that, like someone she might also want to help on a whim.

She wracks her brain for something else to say — how do you thank someone for that? — but settles for giving him a gentle touch on his hand resting on the gear shift.

Maria can't figure out how to open up the car door, it's got some kind of child protector lock that must be standard in cars that aren't a million years old.

“Here, let me walk you up,” he says quickly, darting out of the car before she has to ask him for more help. It's a nice gesture. He's a nice guy.

“Thank you,” she says again as he opens the door, fusses over her and makes sure she doesn't hit her head. It's a little annoying, but mostly sweet, and he looks so concerned that she might somehow trip on the perfectly smooth sidewalk that she has to smother a laugh, turns her head while she fights back a smile.

Fuck. The camera. She can see the lens poking out between the battered blinds of the apartment where James’s friend lives across the street and suddenly she feels a thousand years old, worn out and exhausted and cold. Of course James is watching from over there, that was the whole point of this.

It all falls right out of her: the fight, the hope, the joy, everything, the plane and Chicago and the smell of Susie’s head swirling around her feet, falling down the drain. She wants to throw herself down with it. She can't possibly go now, the window is gone, and the little inch of freedom that was enough for her to consider leaving disappeared the second she remembered. Remembered that this isn't a fucking fairy tale, it's not a Lifetime movie, it's just her sad, shitty life that she hasn't figured a way out of yet.

No. This was the plan. She agreed to it, she wanted to do it. (She didn't, not really). No. She did. She knows that this is how she gets the baby back, and she made her choice with that in mind. She doesn't care, it doesn't matter, none of this matters with that on the line. She _chose_ to do this, _is_ choosing to. She is.

She walks up the stairs to their little landing, digs for her keys in her bag while she composes herself. Hamilton isn't talking, but she can feel him next to her, overflowing with energy, throbbing and distorting the air around them. She can practically hear the unsaid words building up behind his teeth as she unlocks the door and leans against it, arching her back just enough.

“I don't know how I could ever thank you enough,” she says, looking up at him through her lashes.

He smiles down at her. He's very proud of himself, she can tell. “No thanks necessary. I mean it.”

“Are you sure?” She lets the pitch of her voice slip a little higher, slides her hand down the door frame so it's resting just above his, close enough to almost feel the fabric of his suit on her wrist.

He swallows and she has him, she knows she does. “Maria,” he says, long and low, a sort of warning. He doesn't move.

“Tell me what I can do to thank you. Anything,” she says, and he takes a step forward, the tip of his shoe almost over the threshold.

“I - uh, I,” he tries, watching her hand traveling along his arm, tugging lightly on the end of his tie as she steps close enough to almost, almost press their hips together.

She looks up at him, his lips inches from hers, and imagines she can hear the camera shuttering like a round of gunshots. “Anything,” she promises, and he falls, falls for it, falls into her, sighs against her lips like a surrender.

\---------

James comes back not ten minutes after Hamilton leaves, while Maria’s furiously scrubbing herself clean in the scalding shower and the sheets are in the washing machine with a cup of bleach. She can hear him banging around the house with his friend, listens as his footsteps get closer. The money Hamilton gave her is hidden away between _Pride and Prejudice_ and _A Wrinkle in Time_. She should probably tell James about it. He’ll find it at some point and it would be better to be upfront about it. But then she’d have to explain why he gave it to her, and why she told him about Susie, and how Hamilton knew immediately that something wasn’t right with James, and it would be more trouble than it’s worth. And she likes having it, the seeds of possibility, a trap door, the riptie on a parachute out. Even if she's not taking it right now. She can. Whenever she chooses to.

“Hey!” She can see the camera held loosely in his hand, distorted through the glass of the shower door. “How’d it go?”

“Fine,” she says evenly, working her third round of shampoo through her hair. “It was easy.”

James laughs a little. She knew he’d like that. “Rich dumbasses, they always are. We got some good photos. Here, look,” he says, and she pokes her head out of the door. “Careful,” he snaps, yanking it back before a drop of water can fall off her skin onto the screen.

“Sorry.” They are pretty good. Nice shot of his face, Maria’s hand on his chest, his mouth on hers in the open doorway. He really is a fucking idiot, to allow that to happen in full view of anyone walking by when he’s a legitimate celebrity. He probably thought there was no one worth caring about anywhere within miles of their apartment, no one important enough for a moment’s concern.

“We got him leaving, too.” James clicks through more shots of Hamilton following Maria through the door to a bunch presumably taken just a few minutes ago. He’s not wearing his jacket, his tie’s waving loose around his neck like a bright green flag and his hair is down. No lipstick stain, no hickey or anything — that, at least, he was too careful to allow — but combined with the other photos, the evidence is damning.

Maria forces a closed lip smile. “Nice going,” she says mildly. “What’s next?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” James turns off the camera, heads for the door. “Get out of there soon. I’m sick of paying for you to use all the hot water.”

“Fine,” Maria says to herself, giving herself one last once over with her rose scented body wash, tingling on her scrubbed-raw skin. “Fine, fine, fine.”

\---------

Nothing happens, not for a while. James continues to ignore her most of the time, minus those few nights when he comes home drunk and makes it all the way to their bed instead of passing out on the couch. She Skypes with Susie a few times, who’s starting to understand that Maria isn’t actually right there in her computer screen, close enough to touch. She starts asking when she’s coming home, when Mama’s gonna read her a story, when can Susie show her the picture she drew of them the other day. She knows better than to ask James when they can go get her, but god, does she want to.

Nothing happens to Maria — and honestly, why would it? — but the world seems to keep spinning anyway. She's never made a habit of watching the news or anything, but she can't miss the buzzing in New York that summer. She’s not ignorant of what goes on in the world around her, but the stories on TV or in the newspaper just seem so far away from her that they could be happening on another planet. They go on and on and on about how many seats in Congress this state will have, or whether they’ll open up trade with England again, and the national debt, and it doesn’t mean anything, none of it does. The people in the government will run around and deal with this percentage point versus that one, worry about the right word to describe their relationship with their former colonial overlords, and think that they’re changing the world. Where Maria sits, almost nothing has changed. She’s still trapped, still lonely, still here.

But now, sometimes, as she’s flipping through the channels, she’ll pause on CNN or NBC or whatever else and listen for snippets about Secretary Hamilton. It seems like they’re always talking about him, him and the problem with the veterans trying to get paid, some shit about a national bank and debt. He even pops up himself pretty often, talking in run on sentences at some anchor, his hands waving everywhere. They look light, like punctuation marks flying through the air, not at all heavy like the memory of him touching her. She can’t see it, but she knows his feet are always fidgeting under the table, the way they did on the side of her bed while he stuttered his way through an excuse and left.

She’s not watching TV tonight— it’s the end of the month, and their electricity is out until James gets paid tomorrow. If she worked even part time, they wouldn’t have to deal with this, but it’s out of the question, so he says. The AC is out too, so she has all the windows open, the light from the streetlights drifting in while she makes herself a snack, lays the sections of an orange in a perfect circle, arranges a few strawberries around the edge, like the rays of a sun. She goes back to her book and works her way around and around the sky blue plate, comforted by the soft sounds of the summer night.

Someone bangs insistently on the door, startling her. It isn't James. Probably not— he’d call in the event he forgot his keys. She hopes it’s not the landlord, they’re behind on their rent and she doesn’t feel comfortable talking to him and his wandering eyes when she’s alone. She places her bookmark carefully between the pages and goes cautiously to the door, looks through the peephole, and well, shit.

Hamilton is standing there, face shadowed and tense, looking irate and sweaty and clutching his phone in his hand. He raises his fist to knock again, so hard that she can feel the vibrations through the door.

“I can hear you in there, you motherfucker,” he yells and she jolts back like she’s been burned.

Maria reaches for the lock, drops her hand. James will be furious if she lets him in, lets him fuck her again without his permission. Not that he seems to be here for that, but still.

“I'm not leaving. I'll make a huge goddamn scene, piss off all your neighbors, make sure you get in trouble with the landlord. Open the fuck up.”

She unlocks the door and before she can open it Hamilton shoves his way in, yelling “What the _fuck_ is this fucking email?”

Maria closes the door but holds onto the doorknob for some kind of back up or support. “What email?” she asks, playing dumb. No one expects her to know anything anyway.

He blinks at her. “Where is he?”

“Not here, I don't know where,” she says. She honestly doesn’t know where James goes during the day, only that she’s not allowed to go with and that she better be here when he gets back.

“When will he be back?”

“I don't know.” It’s getting late now, he probably shouldn’t be too long, but she never knows. She doesn’t ask. Doesn’t want to know.

He scowls. “Jesus, do you know anything? Fine.” He unlocks his phone, holds the too bright screen inches from her face. His thumbnail is bitten down to the quick. “Why don’t _you_ explain what the fuck this is.”

She doesn’t bother reading the text beyond the “Dear sir” and the “my wife” and nearer to the bottom, “price.” She didn’t want to know what James was going to do, didn’t want to think about the consequences. This wasn’t supposed to come back to her. “I don't know what you mean.”

“Don't lie to me again,” he hisses, replacing the phone with an angry, pointed finger. “You tricked me into sleeping with you, and now you're blackmailing me.”

She shakes her head, ducks out from between him and the door and tries to find somewhere to stand her ground in their tiny, shitty apartment where the walls can’t close in on her. “No, that's not what—”

“This is what you two do? You spread your legs, he collects payment. Pathetic.”

“No—”

“The whole sob story's a set up then?” he demands, and it's like a slap in the face.

“No, it's not—”

“It's not _what?_ ”

“I don’t know anything,” she tries, hating the thickness she hears in her own voice, blinking back unbidden and unwanted tears. He keeps fucking interrupting her, she can’t explain anything, can’t even try to talk her way out of it. Not that she could. She doesn’t even know what she would say, and she’s watched him on TV, arguing with everyone they put in front of him, tearing them to shreds, but she could at least try. She knows she should put up a fight. He’s not— she’s pretty sure that he won’t hurt her, even if he is angry. She thinks.

“There are photos attached to this email. Photos that are perfectly set up outside that door. Making me look like I'm stopping by to see a _whore_ ,” he spits, accusing, like he wasn’t the one that kissed her.

She recoils, and that's the wall at her back, and the ceiling is low and getting closer by the second. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You don’t know how perfectly set up pictures ended up in this letter? Right.”

“I don't know about any letter!” she protests, the stupid stupid tears blurring her vision. “I don't know what you're talking about! I didn't do anything!”

“BULLSHIT!” he roars. “I am not STUPID, I won't be tricked by some slut and her pimp!”

He's so loud, and he's too close, crowding her against the wall and she knows how this ends: with a shove and a slap and worse and she can’t help it, her knees are shaking and she can’t deal and she’s weak and pathetic and should have fought harder and she slides down the wall and buries her face in her knees.

“Stop crying, goddammit,” he snarls. “Get up.”

She shakes her head wildly, digging her hands into her ears, trying to muffle the sound so she can just think, just get her thoughts in order, get back in control of the situation.

“Get up! You don't get to hide from what you've done.”

“I didn't know any better.” The confession tears itself from her throat, a last ditch attempt at defending herself. She’ll do whatever, she doesn’t care, she just needs him to stop yelling at her.

“So you did know!”

“I didn't know how—” she chokes off. “I had to.”

“Had to what? Ruin my life?” he hisses. “You're going to make me not just an adulterer, but some kind of sugar daddy?”

“That's not what I wanted! James—”

“I don't want to fucking hear it! Don't try to justify what you did.” She watches his legs turn and head for the door and can finally breathe again. “You're not getting shit from me. This is over.”

Fuck, no, _no_ , no, he can't leave, he won't give them the money and it's all her fault and they won't be able to get Susie and James is going to be so, so angry.

She scrambles up from the floor, chases after him. “Wait. Don’t go, please,” she pleads. “Just give him what he wants, it's easier that way.”

He shoves her hand off his arm. “I have to go.”

“Don’t,” she says desperately, blocking his path to the door.

“Why the fuck would I want to stay?” He’s angry, she can see his temper boiling under his flushed skin, but she’s more sure by the second that he won’t do anything to her. Even now, he could just push her out of the way and leave, but he doesn't, keeps trying to slip around her, bobbing this way and that like a dark game of whack a mole.

“What do you want?” She tries for seductive but she’s too panicked. She can tell immediately that it doesn’t work.

“Oh my god,” he laughs incredulously. “You fucking sociopaths don’t have anything I want besides to be left alone.”

“You can have me,” she says pathetically, pushing against his chest.

He untangles her fingers from his shirt like they’re nothing. “I don't want you,” he says coldly.

Maria’s panicking, her heart pounding in her ears, drowning out the sound of him complaining under his breath, trying to duck around her and leave. What the fuck is she gonna do? She can feel her chest tightening with another horribly timed sob and takes a shaky breath, shoving it back down. “Stay,” she pleads again, wants to die when her voice wavers on the last note.

His angry little whispered monologue — “how could I do this, how could I do it, how could I be so stupid” — stops short; he looks down at her with renewed interest. That’s right. The damsel thing.

She’s never hated anyone more than she hates him in this moment; latches onto her anger like a lifeline and feels the spinning room stutter to a stop as she gets her hands back on the steering wheel. “Please don’t leave me,” she whispers, forcing herself into his space, bats her eyes up at him. _I’m helpless,_ they say, I need you. He doesn’t back away. God, he’s so awful, so pathetic.

“I don't want you,” he says again, harshly, angrily, but he's letting her push him back into the room.

“Stay,” she says again, exhaling with relief when he doesn't smack her hands away, doesn't even move when she slides them down and makes quick work of his belt. “Please.”

*

“I don't.” He clenches his jaw, looks away from her as she unzips his pants, slips a hand into his boxers where he's already half hard. “I—”

She drops to her knees, tugs his pants down with him. “Please,” she says, one last time, and takes his cock into her mouth.

He exhales heavily. This, at least, she knows how to do. Maria's always been a shit liar, and he was too angry, too eager for a fight for her to get away with it.

She watches his fists tighten and relax over and over in the corner of her eye, knuckles going particularly white when he hits the back of her throat. Maria tilts her head back a little, silently giving permission for him to press forward. He has to enjoy this if it's going to work, and right now he's standing there, frozen. She makes a little sound of encouragement, and the vibration makes his hips jerk forward the slightest, most incremental bit before he goes rigid again.

She grabs his hand, pries it open, and places it on the back of her head. She doesn’t care, she doesn’t, what’s a stupid blow job when she’s already let him fuck her. It's just physical. It doesn't matter, none of it does.

He still doesn't move, but his hand follows her head as she pulls back, drags the tongue along the underside of his cock, mouths obscenely, pornographically at the head and finally he breaks the silence with a low, quiet groan. This time, when she slides back down, he pushes just the slightest bit and she has him, takes him into her throat before either of them can think better of it and swallows, relaxing by the second as his fingers tighten in her hair.

She can fix it, she can win, she's in control, she repeats to herself in her mind as she only half controls her breathing, lets him hear her whimper a little, pulls against his grip, offers herself up for him to take.

He does, gives in with an exhaled “fuck,” thrusting long and smooth into her mouth, leaping at the chance to feel like he's in control. Good, thank god, she can do this, she can fix it. He and James and whoever the fuck else can try to do whatever they want to her, she doesn’t fucking care. They’ll never get her to respect them the way they want. They can yell and hit and fuck all they want, all they’ll ever get from her is contempt.

She pushes him harder, plays him more easily than she thought possible— it's so profoundly disappointing, all the ways that this supposed genius is just another man. He comes biting into his fist, knees shaking against her chest. She swallows, tucks him back into his pants and when she looks up at him he yanks his hands away from her like he's been burned.

*

He looks _horrified_ , pale and trembling and sick. He stares down at her with wild eyes she can't quite read and she can't hide the way she shrinks into herself.

“Oh my god, get up, please.” He reaches for her and she recoils automatically. “Fuck, God, I'm so sorry,” he says shakily, yanking away his hands and staggering back a few steps. “Please, get up. Please.”

She stands slowly, bracing herself against the wall. “I thought that was what you wanted,” she says cautiously, careful not to give him any attitude when he's on edge like this.

“No! Jesus, no,” he says vehemently.

“But—”

“I did, that's why it's so fucking wrong. I should not have let you do that.”

“I'm sorry,” she says quietly. She is. She shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t have manipulated both of them into it. But he should have said no. That’s on him.

“Do _not_ apologize,” he says sharply, and he’s covered his eyes with his fists and doesn’t see her jump. “That was my fault. Not yours.”

She tries the stupid fake gross damsel thing again, biting at her lip and raising her voice a few octaves. “Please don't be mad at me.”

“Jesus, no, _please_ , stop,” he says hoarsely. He looks like he might throw up. Good. “I took advantage of you and I was wrong to do that. How old are you, even?”

Maria blinks. “Twenty three.”

“Fucking Christ alive, fuck,” he says, groaning into his hands. “I'm sorry. Really. I’m so so sorry.”

“But—”

“Maria, _no_ ,” he says, voice rising, and she flinches again. “Shit, I'm sorry, your husband, I forgot, I can't believe I forgot.” He looks stricken, hair falling out of his ponytail and eyes wide, and she hates him and feels sorry for him at the same time. It’s not his fault that she wanted him to break, but he wouldn’t have done that unless he really wanted to.

“I'm sorry,” he says again. “I have to go.”

She’s so tired, all of a sudden, sits down on the couch, draws her knees up to her chest. “Fine. See ya.”

He makes to leave, stalls by the door. “You can’t stay here,” he says suddenly, whipping around.

Maria sighs, exhausted. “What?”

“You can’t stay here. With him. It’s not safe.”

She presses her fingers into her temples, too worn out to argue about how much of a patronizing douchebag he’s being. “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she says, too honestly, but she really just doesn’t care. She just wants to take a shower and watch videos of Susie on her phone until she falls asleep.

“You can come home with me,” he offers. Again, with that strange intimacy: offering cars and money and a bed to some girl he doesn’t know. What the fuck is his problem? Does he do this with everyone? How many stray starving puppies does he have at home?

She looks at him skeptically and he shakes his head. “Not— not like that. I have a guest room.”

“Don't,” she says. “You don't have to do that and I don't want you to.”

“Maria, you can't stay here. I couldn't— if something happened— you can't stay here,” he says, wide eyed and so earnest it pisses her off. _If_ something happened— fuck him. _He’s_ the only _something_ that's happened to her today.

She can't help it, she laughs. “Are you serious?”

“I don't see what's funny.”

“It's funny trying to imagine what could possibly make today different from when you left me here last month.” He flicks his eyes guiltily down at the floor. “That's what I thought. You didn't need to concern yourself then and you don't now. I'm handling it.”

He sighs, looks genuinely upset, which makes her a little less angry. “I'm sorry. But it's true. Let me just do this. You can't stay here, you can't.”

“It's fine. I'm fine.”

“No, just come on. Let me help.”

She can see himself winding himself up, rising up on his toes, shoulders stiffening and spine going ramrod straight, and she really doesn't think she can take it. She's sick of arguing, doesn't think she can stomach being yelled at again. “Fine,” she agrees. It's just one night, who cares, really. It’s easier to let him think he’s having his way and deal with everything later. Maria can sleep anywhere, and she’d bet his air conditioning is working. It's her own choice. “Let me get my stuff.”

Bedroom door closed and locked, she grabs her phone, pauses with her thumbs over her screen, trying to find the right wording.

_MR: Hamilton is here. He wants me to come home with him._

_JR: Good the email worked go!!!!!!_

She feels a little queasy, thinking about whatever “it” was that “worked.” She knew from the get go that something wasn’t right, that she was helping set Hamilton up to get majorly fucked (in more ways than one, a hysterical little voice says in the corner of her mind), but she doesn’t want to know the details. Never has. This isn’t her plan, this isn't what she wants, and she won’t play along any more than is absolutely necessary.

She doesn’t grab much, just her purse and a phone charger. He jumps a mile when she opens the door again.

“Ready?” He’s fidgeting, fingers drumming against his thighs and eyes bouncing everywhere but her.

She nods, places her forgotten snack in the fridge and puts her book in her bag. If he’s going to be like that all night, all skittish like he hasn't seen her naked, she’ll need something to do.

Her phone buzzes again.

_JR: Keep him happy._

Fine. Fine, fine, fine, who fucking cares.

He practically runs away from her, pacing on the landing while she locks the door. He doesn't speak, not when she follows him down to where he’s parked carelessly on the curb, not when he absentmindedly opens the door for her, not until they're silent in the car and she can see how uneasy it makes him. He waits for her to click her seat belt before he starts the car.

Maria concentrates very hard on braiding a few loose strands of her hair and doesn’t look at him. He does a good job of pretending she doesn’t exist, muttering under his breath and stabbing at his phone violently at red lights.

He sighs theatrically when they get stopped in a little bit of traffic and she fights back an eye roll.

“What's wrong?” she asks, more out of obligation than real curiosity.

“This bullshit with the debt plan.”

“What plan?”

He perks up a little. “Essentially I want to consolidate all the debt of the individual states and have a single national debt instead. A dollar, instead of a hundred pennies. It'll make it easier to borrow money from other countries and banks and it'll give us the boost we need to really get the economy going again.”

“Oh.” That actually doesn't sound like a horrible idea. “That makes sense to me.” He smiles a little in the corner of her eye, but she does actually mean it. He’s not bad at explaining things. “Why is it bullshit?”

Another dramatic sigh. “I don't have the votes and it's supposed to come up on the docket in a few weeks. I don't know what I'm going to do.”

She takes a stab at random. “How many votes do you need?”

“Not even that many,” he whines. “It could honestly get passed with four or five defections, but it's impossible. The Southerners are being such relentless dickbags about it.”

“Why?”

“States rights and all that dumb shit. And they're so obsessed with the idea that the south is some kind of idyllic, rural paradise uncorrupted by the evils of money and trade. Probably why they all miss slavery so much, fucking hypocrites.”

“That doesn't seem right,” she prompts.

“No, it's not. There's like one small family farm for every ten corporate. They're delusional. But I have to figure out how to get at least a few of them to change sides if I'm going to get this passed. I just don't know how. Jefferson and Madison have such a tight hold on them that I don't see how I can get them on my side.” He sighs again, lets his head roll to the side and looks at her. “What do you think?”

“What?”

“I don't know how I should play it. I'm all out of ideas. You got anything?”

“What do they want?” she answers cautiously.

His eyes fall shut and his shoulders heave as he takes a deep breath.“You're right,” he says, sounding exhausted. “It's gonna have to be a trade of some kind.”

“What do you have to give them?”

“A promise not to fight one of their bullshit bills, maybe. Tax cuts. Who knows.”

“Hmm,” she says, mostly to fill the silence.

“Yeah. They’ll probably want me to drop minimum wage. I’ll do it, but I don’t want to. It’ll get passed without me, eventually, but I can speed it along.” He shrugs, gnawing at the side of his cheek the way he did when he picked up his phone and saw a missed call after the first time. Guilty, and trying to hide it. “Or maybe I’ll have to reduce tariffs or something, get the big bad government off the backs of their underpaid employees. Who knows. Depends on who I'm dealing with.”

Maria taps her fingers on her knees, considering. “You can pick?”

“Hmm?” He glances at her absentmindedly, waiting to turn left.

“You can pick who you trade with?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s just about what that person wants,” she says. “Not all of them.”

He goes quiet, staring off into space for a long moment, and Maria panics. _I said to keep him happy, don't you know how to fucking listen?_ James hisses in her ear.

“I'm sorry, that was stupid, of course you've already thought of that, I didn't mean to-”

“Maria,” he cuts her off, brow furrowed. “Don't— don’t do that. You have nothing to be sorry for. It was a good point.”

“I was just talking, it didn't mean anything,” she says, words tumbling over each other in a rush. He doesn’t seem mad, he seems pretty nice, but he seemed like that before.

“ _Stop_ ,” he says firmly, and she freezes. He notices— his knuckles go white on the steering wheel and he grimaces. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she says quietly, looking down at her knees, at the scrape from knocking it against (getting shoved into) the door frame finally healing.

He looks like he wants to argue, but thinks better of it. “What were you trying to say?” he prods gently.

She digs her fingernails into the skin of her thighs. She’s too on edge after earlier, doesn’t like the knowledge she has of him, doesn’t want to know what he sounds like and looks like when he loses his temper. _Keep him happy._

She takes a deep breath, steadies herself. “That you should pick someone who wants something you don't mind giving. Something you were already going to give away. Or that doesn’t matter.”

One, two, three terrifying seconds pass before he responds.

“Damn,” he says, whistling long and low. “You're right. I get to pick. There's only one me and there's about fifty of them.” He turns and grins at her, boyish and charming and so, so easy to like. “Nice one.”

“Thanks?”

They fall back into silence as he turns onto the street that must be his, parking outside a picture perfect brownstone.

“Well.” He jerks his chin at the door. “Let's go then.”

She slides out of the car, follows him up the stairs of their townhouse, watches him unlock the door with shaky fingers. “They’re all upstate, for the summer,” he says. “With— with _her_ family.”

“Okay,” she says neutrally. She doesn’t know what he wants to hear, but she’s not stupid enough to pry. She doesn’t want to think about his wife (Elizabeth, Wikipedia says her name is) and four children either.

“They won’t be back until closer to Labor Day.”

“Okay.”

She follows him into the house, up the stairs, stands next to the door he opens silently. It’s nice, she supposes, if a bit plain. A big photo of some military guy on the wall, a few boxes stacked in the corner.

“I have, um, clothes you can borrow, if you want,” he says, disappearing into the door at the end of the hall, the one not marked with a name in childish handwriting— she can see Philip, Alex (a namesake? figures), a shared John and Jamie from here.

She holds her breath, standing there, pretending like she's not looking at the wall full of family photos, a mob of cute kids with dark hair and big eyes. If he comes back with something of his wife's she's gonna puke. She looks at the enormous photo in the golden frame, tries to puzzle out the long string of names at the bottom. Those can't all possibly belong to one guy.

“Here,” he says, hands her a Kings College t-shirt and conspicuously male sweatpants. She appreciates the gesture, takes them with a smile she doesn't need to force.

“Thanks,” she says, rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet. Their carpet is soft. She likes it.

He's not moving; she isn't either. She doesn't know what he wants from her, doesn't really feel comfortable sleeping in his guest room and then just… going back to her life tomorrow. Spending the whole day alone and on edge, fighting for the little scraps of control that keep her from going insane. Here, at least, with him, she feels like she can get a hold on things. She has something to do, something to work for, something new to think about and break up the “Susie gone James here Maria trapped” cycle of thoughts that she tries so hard to keep at bay.

It's fucked up, but she wants this to last as long as she can make it.

She can see the little angel and devil warring with each other on his shoulders, screaming _yes_ and _no_ and _go_ and _stay_. She kind of wants him to say no— it would be so nice to have that decision taken off her shoulders, and she'd like to think of him as a guy who will ultimately do the right thing.

She thinks a lot of other things, but doesn't really want to enumerate them or acknowledge them or examine why exactly she's doing this— so she doesn't, doesn't acknowledge the overwhelming loneliness and the strange want for him to like her and the drive to escape for just a few minutes, she just reaches out and wraps her fingers around his wrist. His pulse butterflies under her fingers and then his hands are on either side of her face and he's kissing her so gently she wants to die.

Who gave him the right to make her not hate him? Who made her this way so she even wants him to kiss her? Where the fuck did either of them get the idea that doing this would make them feel better and why aren't they wrong? And honestly, really, what the fuck is his problem, how does he possibly have the nerve to be like this, after earlier and inside the house where his children live. How dare he be careful not to press her against a wall, sigh so entirely sincerely against her neck, wait for her to nod her permission before sliding his hands down to her hips.

She hates how completely she melts against him, every cell in her body soaking up every scrap of stupid affection and filling up the gaping, aching chasms created by the loneliness of the past year. He pulls her into what must be the bedroom he shares with his wife and she doesn't even care, all she wants is for him to never, ever stop touching her, never let her go, never make her leave and go back to her life.

\---------

“Hey, baby,” James says into her shoulder, stirring her awake. “Whatever you're doing to him, keep it up. As long as he's happy, we get more money. Who knows, we might even have enough to get Susie back soon.”

Maria breathes slowly, in and out. “Okay. Fine.” She used to have so many words, entire novels of them crammed in her head, bursting at the seams of her body. All those things she dreamed of doing, saying, being. Not anymore.

“Good girl,” he says, whiskey soaked breath sliding across her face as he pushes her onto her back and fits himself between her legs. “See how good things can be when you just listen?”

\---------

Hamilton calls and Maria goes, that summer, more often that she’d bet he’d like to admit.

She hates how much she doesn’t hate him. She should, he absolutely deserves it. He’s her antagonist, sure, but he’s not a monster, no matter how hard she tries to make him one in her head— it would be so much easier that way. But he’s not. He’s just some idiot with a hero complex that thinks he’s helping.

She doesn’t hate the nights she spends with him either. Maybe twice, three times a week he’ll call her on his way home from the office, drive miles out of the way to pick her up, or sometimes he’ll send an Uber. She doesn’t know what exactly the arrangement is between him and James — she’d honestly rather not know how much either of them think she’s worth — but she goes when he calls, every time. It’s better than sitting at home entirely alone, holding her breath waiting to see what kind of mood James comes home in, and it’s not like she has any friends here. It’s quieter over there, in the brownstone he doesn’t have to share with any other loud screaming families or creepy landlords, the empty house with his entire family upstate.

She’ll sit cross-legged on one of the stools in his kitchen with a glass of wine — the good stuff, better than she’s ever had — and watch him make dinner. There’s takeout, a lot of the time, and occasionally he cooks, simple meals, heavy on the rice. He’s not what she would have expected, not a parody of a workaholic without his wife’s supervision. He functions, relatively well, though she supposes she has something to do with that. A human security blanket. She doesn't entirely mind— she doesn't like being alone, either.

He’s always talking about something. Usually about work. He rambles on and on and on, arguing with himself while she provides cues every time he pauses for breath. She listens, most of the time. He really is very smart, and it’s interesting to hear about current events directly from the source. She likes the sound of his voice, tumbling over this phrase and that concept and sticking on a single point, a voice that fills a room up and keeps the air from getting stale.

He asks her what she thinks, and always listens carefully, even though she has no idea what she's talking about. He’s such an argumentative asshole sometimes, goads her into having opinions about imports and inflation and what should go on the coins they’re making. She doesn’t care, not really, but he keeps asking her _why, why, why_ she thinks this, why she doesn’t like that, and she finds herself trying to convince him that she’s right and being more pleased than she should be when he says she has a point. She doesn’t care about his opinion. At all. But she likes seeing him smile so delightedly when she forces him to look at something from a new angle, likes feeling like she’s done something that might matter.

Eventually he tires himself out, running around the treadmill of his mind. He kind of slumps, that energy that always infects the air around him dissipating and the tightly drawn line of his shoulders bending and drooping. She can’t help but reach for him when he looks like that. He’ll pull her into him, resting his chin on the top of her head while he steadies his breathing, transitions from worn out to something closer to relaxed.

She can’t help but wonder if he does this with his wife.

Then he’ll kiss her, and she’ll kiss him back, because he’s nice to her and she likes how badly he seems to need her, and really, why not. That, at least, she can control. She's always the one to escalate, and he always lets her lead. It doesn’t make everything better, but she appreciates it.

He's not someone that cheats because he has some kind of gross fetish he can't get from his wife— if he is, he's not doing it with Maria. There's nothing to go to the tabloids with if that was something she even wanted to do. He's considerate. Doesn't cry or ask her to call him weird names or even do that thing where he pushes her head. Gentle, but not needlessly so, not at the expense of making her feel good.

Those are the better nights; most of them are like that. Not all of them.

He only ever lets her go down on him in his blackest, darkest moods. Not when he's simply angry; he's angry all the time that summer, constantly frustrated with the southerners and the myriad of issues they cause. No, those particular nights are the worst, when he barely speaks, his running monologue turned inward. She can see the guilt all over him, read the self loathing in his eyes. Those are the nights he gives in: accepts being an adulterer and a shitty person, lets her call him baby, doesn't flinch when she bats her eyes up at him from her spot at his feet.

She doesn't like herself those nights either. But she has to do it, if she wants him to stay. Has to keep him feeling guilty, like he owes her something.

The other kind of bad night is when he tries to fix it. He’ll spend hours on his knees, Maria spread out on the bed above him, a kind of penance, begging for forgiveness that isn't hers to give. Trying to make up for the fact that he’s cheating on his wife, that he’s taking advantage of Maria, along with a multitude of other sins she can’t even guess at. She knows he thinks this is about him, that the person most wronged in this situation is his wife, Saint Eliza with the beautiful home she knows Hamilton didn’t decorate himself and the orphanage and the fifth baby on the way. Maria feels guilty about it, too, but she wishes he wouldn’t ignore her own involvement so completely. Those nights he’s tender and sweet and turns her into a shaking mess that clings to him longer than she’d ever admit in the daytime. She knows he thinks that he’s saving her, and that that’s somehow justification for the sins he commits in the process. She prefers it to him blaming her — _tricked by some slut_ — but she wishes he would acknowledge the wrongs that he’s doing to her as well.

It’s just… complicated. None of this matters, really, she’d sleep with the devil himself if it got her Susie back. But he… isn’t. Hamilton is nice to her, in his distant, fucked up way, and she honestly likes spending time with him. And since she’s started sleeping over there regularly, James hasn't really done anything. He only makes it into their bed every once in a while, and is still usually drunk and pushy, but he leaves her alone more often than not. She doesn't want to know what Hamilton did, she really doesn't, but she didn't miss the look on his face after she cringed when he touched her barely healed cheekbone.

If this was a trashy romance novel, she'd thank him, but Maria doesn't think he deserves her thanks for being a decent person. He's still paying James to continue fucking her, no matter what kind of pretty words he might try to dress it up in, turning this Brothers Grimm nightmare into a Disney movie. This isn’t a love story, not at all. Maria doesn't like to dwell on it, but that doesn't make it any less true.

\---------

It’s one of the good nights, mid-July. The two of them are sitting on the couch in his front room: him typing, her reading. His elbow bangs into her shins whenever he backspaces to aggressively. She's too wrapped up in her book to really care, but she does notice how touching someone else or being reminded how he's not alone steadies him the same way it does her.

“This is dumb,” he mutters, shoving his laptop onto the coffee table.

“It is,” Maria agrees absently, turning the page. She knows that Natasha lives, but that doesn’t make the next few pages any less nerve wracking.

He mumbles to himself a little more, probably whining about how the words are wrong and he shouldn't even have to write this, everyone should just listen. She’ll indulge him if he gets louder, but usually he finds his own way back to being productive.

“No fucking way,” he says suddenly, and she looks up. He’s leaning over the back of the couch, staring intently out the window. “Look who it is,” he says with a delighted grin, and then he's sprinting towards his front door. Maria hears him open it and call “yo!” out into the street.

“Ah, Mr. Secretary!”

“Mr. Burr, sir!” Hamilton yells back. She can hear the smile in his voice. “What's up?”

“Oh, you know. The usual,” Mr. Burr, sir, says, voice much closer and at a reasonable volume. Maria panics, casts her eyes around for somewhere to hide. What the fuck? He remembers that she's here, doesn't he? She knows he doesn’t really notice her, but he can’t be that oblivious, right?

“Very illuminating,” Hamilton says dryly. “Theodosias well?”

“As ever. Your mob?”

“Upstate with Eliza’s family.”

“I heard Angelica's in town, too.” His wife's sister. Angelica Church. The one who lives in England. She's something of a celebrity over there— Maria found pages and pages of photos.

“She is,” he answers, uncharacteristically short.

“Interesting,” Burr says diplomatically. “Did you hear the news about General Mercer?”

“Nope.”

“You know Claremont street?”

“Yeah.”

“They renamed it after him.”

“Shut the fuck up. Him?”

Burr laughs smoothly, takes on a fake dramatic tone. “The Mercer legacy is secure.”

Hamilton laughs too. “Damn. That fuckin' guy. How'd he get a street when he sucked so badly?”

“All he had to do was die.” Maria frowns but the two of them laugh harder. Jesus Christ. She doesn't know what Burr looks like but Hamilton's typical green is closer to black today, and she imagines them on the threshold, dark mirrors of each other with their ghoulish foreshadowing, fucked up jokes and shivers. They apparently have no qualms about inviting dark omens into their lives— she’s sure both of them have no idea how bad things can get. There’s no way they would tempt death if they _knew_.

“That's a lot less work than all this,” Hamilton says wryly.

“You're telling me. We oughta give it a try,” Burr jokes, and they laugh again. “Anyway, man, how are things going at the treasury?”

“Eh. They're going.”

“You gonna get that debt plan through?”

Maria holds her breath; he's been in an awful mood this week, complaining about it constantly and waking her up with loud typing and muttering at all hours of the night.

“Oh yeah,” Hamilton says easily, confidently. A lie, she knows for sure.

Burr knows it too, barks out a skeptical laugh. “How?”

“ _How?_ You know, Burr,” Hamilton says, tone turning a little sharper— she can picture him crossing his arms over his chest. “It looks like I might have to take your advice after all.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he answers flatly, and then mimicking Burr’s lower, smoother voice, “talk less, smile more.”

“Really.”

“Yep. All that _bullshit,"_ and wow, he's really going for it, being the biggest asshole possible.

“I see.” Burr’s open, familiar tone is gone, evaporated like summer rain. “Madison and Jefferson are merciless, you know. It won't be easy.”

“Well, you know me, hate the sin, love the sinner,” Hamilton says venomously.

“Alex— ”

“Sorry, Burr, I gotta go. Decisions are happening over dinner tomorrow. Gotta be ready.”

“Right. Good luck.”

The door slams heavily, and Hamilton comes stomping back into the room, muttering “douchebag,” and throwing himself back onto the couch. Maria represses an eye roll. She'd say pot should meet kettle but it seems like there's a long, dramatic history there and she’d really not get in between whatever ex boyfriend nonsense is going on there.

He's staring at his laptop but not doing anything, tapping his fingers on the space bar repeatedly but not actually typing. “Dinner tomorrow?” she prompts.

He exhales heavily. “Yeah. Me, Madison, Jefferson. Satan’s dungeon.” He quirks a half smile, clarifies. “Jefferson’s place.”

“How do you think it'll go?” she asks, careful to keep it neutral.

“Eh. If they do what I think they're going to do, then it'll go pretty well. If they do something stupid, which is entirely possible, it's anyone's guess.”

“You know what they're going to do already?” It's an intentionally flattering question, to be sure, but she is legitimately curious.

He shrugs. “I have my suspicions. They’re two asshole Virginians that want asshole Virginian things.”

“I see.” She doesn't, not really.

“Sorry, I realize that's not at all helpful,” he says. God, if he would just be a dick all the time this would be so much easier. “They want what most of the Southerners want: less taxes, agro subsidies, for us all to look the way while they underpay and abuse the people that make them rich.”

“Is that all?” she jokes, and he laughs, looking incredibly pleased.

“Word. But these two are extra… everything. They want all that shit plus an ego boost and for us to acknowledge that Virginia is the pinnacle of human civilization.”

“That seems entirely reasonable.” She can't help herself from laughing along with him. “Is that why you're dealing with them instead of someone less… powerful? If that makes sense? Isn't Jefferson the Secretary of State? Does he even get a vote?”

“I mean, I don't get a vote either, but he and I aren't without a significant amount of influence with the ‘less powerful,’ as you so bluntly put it,” Hamilton says, somehow making it sound like a compliment. “If I can get them to turn, they'll bring the rest with them. Easier than going after a bunch of individual votes.”

“That sounds like a good plan.”

“Thanks. It helps that I know them both pretty well. I see Jefferson every day, and he’s not nearly as subtle as he thinks he is. Madison and I actually used to be friends,” he says bitterly. “So I’ve got him covered as well.”

Seems like he’s got a _great_ track record keeping friends, she thinks meanly, unnecessarily so. She minds more than she should. “That’s good,” she says automatically, startles a little when he looks at her like she’s lost her mind. “I mean it’s good that you know so much, not that you used to be friends and aren’t anymore. Sorry,” she says, brain catching up to her mouth. He’s rubbing off on her. “I didn’t mean that, either.”

“It’s okay,” he says, smiling softly. “I know what you meant.”

“Good,” Maria says decisively, goes back to her book. When her knees tip to the side and rest against his shoulder, neither of them pull away.

She thinks about him and his dinner the whole next day, which is odd. Maria’s very good at compartmentalizing (has to be, otherwise she couldn’t survive) and she usually does her best to forget he exists when she’s not with him. There’s no way he cares what she does, he's too busy. It doesn't matter, she supposes. She goes over whenever he asks, immediately, doesn't make him work for it. He doesn't really ask about what she gets up to in the day time, Hamilton's far too self absorbed for that, and she thinks he doesn't want to hear about her shitty life anyway.

But she still thinks about it, him sitting across from Jefferson, who he hates, and Madison, who used to be his friend, and feels a weird pang of sympathy. The thought catches in her mind and she can't shake it.

She takes the bus over to the botanical gardens for a distraction. She’s lived in New York for almost three years and never before had the chance. It’s ironic that it took James literally pimping her out to get a little freedom, but Maria's always tried to look on the bright side of things. James will do anything to keep Hamilton happy and paying— she goes everywhere she wants now, a simple text of “@ H’s” all it takes to get him to leave her alone. The lie comes so easily she doesn't even think about it, just goes back to reading under a picture perfect rose bush, feeling very far away from the harshness of her day to day.

The hours stretch by and she tries to shove aside the knowledge she has and never asked for, quiet all the names and dates and facts rattling around in her brain. It's not that she doesn't _want_ to know what's going to happen to the country she lives in, but it's maddening to have these pieces and not be able to do anything about it.

If she was someone or something else, she might find a way to sell the things she knows. She could go to Jefferson or Madison or the press with what she knows about what he's planning to do. She doesn't know it all, but she knows enough. If they're half as smart as he is, she knows they'll be able to figure it out. James wouldn't even have to know. He'd never consider that Hamilton actually talks to her, or that Maria might know how to really listen.

As for Hamilton— he's so _careless_ about these things. He doesn't seem to think anything of outlining his strategies to her over dinner or taking phone calls with the president while she's in the passenger seat. She doesn't know if it's because he trusts her — why would he? — or if he just doesn't consider her at all. She wishes she would. Maria's doing her best to ruin his life and Hamilton just keeps calling. If she was a better person she'd shake him until he snapped out of it, but she won't. She has to look out for herself, no one else will.

So she could sell his secrets. She bets she could get a decent price. Maybe even enough to leave. She looks up the address to the State Department; types the number to the Times into her phone.

She doesn't go through with it and decides not to consider why.

Maria doesn’t hear from him until closer to eleven, and has to hold herself back from begging to hear how it went right then on the phone. He offers to send a car and she obviously accepts, running up his stairs with a strange eagerness when she arrives.

He's pacing in circles around the middle of the room, looks up and beams when she comes in. “I did it,” he crows, throwing his arms out with a dramatic _ta da!_ that slants shadows across his face. “I won!”

“Congratulations,” she says, lets him pull her into his arms, dance her around the room. “What exactly did you win?”

“The motherfucking banks,” he brags. “They’re gonna let me do what I want with the debt and I get to keep them all here in New York. I got those assholes to agree to vote for it and all it took was a stupid dinner and my signature.” He’s drunk, loose limbed with sickly sweet breath. She hates it a little on principle, but the alcohol seems to make him giddy, excited, almost childlike — he holds her hand and waist tightly but doesn’t grab or pull.

He spins her around and around, not flinching away when her hair hits him in the face. She wants to grab him and shake him, get him to calm down and tell her what’s happening. She needs to know. “What did you sign?”

“Absolutely fucking nothing!” He starts laughing, hysterically, and only then can she see just how dark the circles under his eyes are. “Well, a napkin. But nothing important. They wanted the capital next to their state, in that muggy shithole of a swamp. And they can have it!”

Maria stiffens, confused. “It won’t be… here? Anymore?” Not that anything in their country — and it’s still weird to call it that — has been around for very long, but she still got used to the idea of the capital being in New York. Even if everything’s changing she thought that maybe that, at least, would stay constant.

“Nope! Goodbye! Bonsoir! Saya fuckin nara!” He trips over her foot, stumbles a little. “It doesn't matter. It's a symbol, we can all go live back where I grew up for all it matters. New York’s always been the financial hub, we won't miss the politics. And I'll get to build whatever I want while they realize they got a _toy_ and I got _everything_.”

“Wow,” she says, for lack of anything else. It's so hard to reconcile who he really is, the prodigy that sits at the president’s right hand, with the guy in front of her, drunk and giddy and mumbling under his breath. She knew he was going to the dinner, what he was going there to do, who Secretary Jefferson and Congressman Madison are, but it’s hard to imagine three men having a few drinks and deciding where the government is going to go. Imagine thinking yourself powerful enough to do that, being arrogant enough to decide what’s best for the country, feeling entitled to negotiate with the futures of millions of people. No wonder he seems so drunk on it; so drained.

“Yeah,” he exhales, and pulls her forward into his heaving chest, rests his chin on the top of her head. She hesitates for a moment, not sure what he wants. “I got everything I wanted,” he says quietly, and that little boy lost note in his voice tugs at something in her and she finds herself locking her arms around his back until she can feel him relax.

She knows she shouldn't push him, but she's genuinely worried about him and since that second night, Maria's never worried about what he'll do. “Did you?” she asks.

“No,” he whispers, his arms tightening just a bit. “I had to promise not to—”

“Hey,” she cuts him off gently, runs her hand over his back lightly. “You still won. That's what matters.”

“I know, but I had to—”

“ _Stop_. It doesn't matter. You got to keep what matters, what really matters, and everything else is just bullshit. They can take other things from you but as long as you got what you really wanted, you still win. As long as you keep what you decide matters and you keep who you are, they can't touch that no matter how hard they try.”

“You're right,” he says, looking down at the floor. “Of course you're right.”

“You can decide if you won or not,” she says, eyes shut tight against whatever is building in her mind, whatever’s forcing these words out of her mouth. “They can’t control you if you don’t let them. They can’t win if you don’t care. They _can’t_.”

She can feel his chest rise and fall under her cheek, and wonders what he knows of her. She wonders if Hamilton thinks of her at all, really considers who she is, or if she just occurs to him when he's bored or lonely, an impulse decision, the cheap candy next to the cash register. A placeholder for the wife he’s missing, a convenient distraction. It doesn't matter, either way, Maria knew what she was getting into, she knew that this would cost her dignity and pride and autonomy. She's fought like hell to keep what control and self-respect she had left, but those little victories are looking more and more hollow by the second.

“You _won_ ,” she says again. She needs to believe it.

“I won,” he agrees, and she doesn’t have to ask him not to let her go.

Later that night, she goes and finds his phone where it lies abandoned next to his tie and a half empty tumbler. She wants to know, she has to know, has to remind herself what she already knows. This isn't about her. It never has been.

There it is, exactly what she expected. A forty minute phone call to “Eliza” and a short pause before a thirty second one to “Maria.” Not even a fake name. She scrolls through his recent calls, sees her own name beside the ones she sees on the news: Washington, Madison, Jefferson. And in the middle of everything: Eliza. Eliza. Eliza.

Maria wonders what someone would think, seeing her name next to all of those others. If they might think that she matters, too.

She calls a cab, from his phone, and stares at the call log for a little while before deleting it, then leaves his house like she was never there at all.

\---------

She thought he would relax after he made his deal with his devils, but it only lasts a week or so.

He starts getting wound tighter and tighter, and she doesn’t put two and two together until she overhears some of the neighbors talking about back to school shopping and finds class schedules for Philip, Angelica, and Alexander Hamilton, Jr. on his kitchen table. Smart kids, they’re in honors and advanced everything. Not that that’s a surprise, with Secretary and Doctor Schuyler-Hamilton as your parents. School’s back soon, she remembers with a little wave of pain and regret for the life she lost. She could be drawing up lesson plans, decorating a classroom. Not that she would want to give up Susie, but still.

But anyway, school starts again in just a few weeks, and that means that his family will be back. His _wife_ will be back. She doesn’t know what he plans to do. He doesn’t seem like the type to sneak around behind her back, but the first time, back in May, she was presumably in town. She saw the “Eliza” on his phone, watched him freak the fuck out when he realized what he did. She doubts she would have ever seen him again if she hadn’t… done what she did, the next time they saw each other.

She tries not to think about it, as usual, but she overheard the two little girls that live down the street comparing gel pens and started wondering. It doesn't matter, she supposes. As long as he's calling (and paying), she'll go even if deep down she's still rooting for him to do the right thing.

But the girls with the gel pens ended up being more distracting than she realized, and she has her key in the lock before she realizes that the yelling she’s hearing is coming from her apartment, and that she’s very well acquainted with both of those voices. God, what the fuck is he doing here? What are either of them? It’s only six o’clock, Hamilton should be at work, and she can’t remember the last time James came home before dark. She can feel her pulse speeding up, her breathing going a little ragged. What are they doing? What are they yelling about? She didn’t do anything, she didn’t.

Maria sits on the steps and tries to calm down, listens to Hamilton and James argue through the door. She stops trying to make sense of the words when they get too loud, just tunes it out and picks the shriveled petals off the neighbor’s flower pot.

Hamilton comes bursting out the door a little while later. “Oh,” he says lamely when he sees her sitting there. “I didn't know you were here.”

She shrugs. “I wasn’t.”

He looks severely caught off guard, though she's not sure why. It's not that strange that she'd be at her own apartment. She does look fairly different than she does when he usually sees her, she'll give him that. It was too hot for anything but a worn out cotton dress, and she's bare faced and her hairs in a bun on the top of her head, a sweaty strand stuck to the side of her neck. She usually dresses up to go over to his, spends a little more time making herself look older and less like herself in the mirror. Neither of them are comfortable with the age difference, and Maria prefers not to be reminded.

“I have to go. For good,” he adds, looking everywhere but at her. “Don't worry about him. I have a friend in… law enforcement who's going to be keeping an eye on both of you. He won't hurt you anymore.”

“You're leaving?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He huffs a laugh, surprised. “Maria, this has to end. I won't be extorted anymore. I know it's not your fault, but I can't do it.”

“Okay,” she says, uncertain. “Fine.”

“Go see him,” he says, handing her a business card, _tues 3pm_ scrawled on the back. “He's a friend of mine. Well, kind of. But he's the best.”

She glances at the card. _Aaron Burr, Esq._ “I know who he is, I'm not stupid. He came over that one day.”

“Oh,” he says again, like she's surprised him by existing when she's not in his bed. “Right. I forgot. Well, anyway. Go. He'll get you your divorce.”

Not this bullshit again. “I can't,” she refuses, stands up and shoves it back at him.

“Maria, please,” he sighs, presses the card back into her hand and forces her fingers closed over it. “I can't do this anymore, my… I can't do this anymore. But I can't leave you with him. Please, go see Burr. Leave James. Please.”

“What if I say no? I don't want to go see one of your friends, sit in some lawyers office while he judges me for what you and I did. I don’t want your cop friend hanging around.”

“Herc isn’t a cop, he’s… it doesn’t matter. Burr doesn't know and you don't have to tell him. You have more than enough to get your husband to go away for good. Just go. I made you an appointment and everything.”

“No,” she says harshly.

“Maria, please.”

“You don't get to tell me what to do.”

“I'm not telling you what to do, I'm trying to help you.” She can tell by the way his whole body strains, rising up on the balls of his feet, that he really believes it. He really thinks he's being a good guy, doing the right thing, acting the hero in this story. It makes her feel sick.

“I don't want your help. I _still_ don't want your help.”

He shakes his head, digs in his heels. “I can't leave without knowing that you're gonna be okay.”

“Bullshit. You're leaving anyway, it doesn't matter what I say.” She's so mad, she could kill him, and she doesn't know why. It's not like she wants him to stay. Not at all.

“I'm—”

“No!” It bursts out of her, almost a yell. “Don't lie to me.”

He looks down at his shoes, shrugs lamely. “All I want is to know that you'll be alright. You got caught up in this and I feel bad. It’s not your fault. It wasn’t about you.”

“Fuck you,” she hurls at him, feeling perversely satisfied when he flinches. “You don't care about me. And that's fine, I don’t need you to, I don’t want you to. But don't lie.”

“I just want to help.”

“This is your version of helping? I definitely don't want that, I don't need anything else from you, Alexander “my fucking dick fixes everything” Hamilton,” she snarls, angrier when she realizes that it's the first time she's ever called him by name.

“Maria, I—”

“Shut up! You can't just walk away like nothing happened-”

“I’m not,” he says, defensive, and fuck him.

“— run back to _Eliza_ —”

“Watch it,” he snaps, eyes glittering.

“— and pretend nothing happened and that you did nothing wrong and still get to feel good about yourself for saving me. You didn't do shit to help me. You don't get to soothe your conscience with a _fucking_ business card,” Maria spits, chest heaving. She hates him, she hates men like him, all of them, every single one. The way they swan around the world, so self-important, everyone else just toys to make them feel powerful.

He certainly doesn’t look powerful now. He looks pathetic, standing there on her front step, expensive suit and messy ponytail. Staring at her with those huge, offended eyes, like she’s the one who’s done something wrong here.

“I’m sorry,” Hamilton says. “I really am.”

She should cry, should scream, should deliver the speech she’s rehearsed before falling asleep next to him all these nights. She sighs, shoves her hair out of her face. The fight went out of her a long time ago, and she doesn't have anything left. “You don’t even know what to be sorry for.”

She slams the door behind her.

\---------

Nothing happens to Maria. Not for a while. Not for seven years.

That’s not true, a lot of things happen. She didn’t see Aaron on “tues, 3pm” but she went eventually. He took her on pro-bono, paid for her to get Susie back, helped them find an apartment and Maria a job as a secretary for a colleague, and got Susie into a good kindergarten in a safe neighborhood. She didn’t know how to thank him, and still doesn’t. She sends him pictures of Susie every once in a while and he gives her hand me downs from his own daughter. She voted for him when he ran for Senate against Hamilton’s father in law.

She never told him explicitly about Hamilton, but she thinks he knows a lot more than he’d ever say. About that, and everything else.

She’s happy, for a while. She doesn’t think about him. She doesn’t know why she waited so long to tell someone, but she does know why she took the chance. Maria’s not on social media, she doesn’t know that one of the photos James took that first night is on some blog until some guy with his phone out approaches her when she’s walking home from a maybe kind of date with the nice girl that teaches Susie’s dance class. Asks her “Are you Maria Reynolds?” and “Did you have an affair with Alexander Hamilton?”

Maria considers lying, telling the guy to fuck off. But instead she smiles, looks directly into the camera. “Yes,” she tells him. “I did have an affair with Alexander Hamilton.”

The next day, the stories that everyone reads are finally, _finally_ about her.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so, so much for reading! i hope you enjoyed it, and i hope you love maria even a fraction of how much i do. shouts to august-songs for letting me whine about this for the past month. 
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](http://iaintinapatientphase.tumblr.com/), come say hi.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Reason for Shame](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6441238) by [derevko (sunshine_queen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshine_queen/pseuds/derevko)




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